Taint Funny, McGee!

Okay, come on.

Come on!

As though the headline wasn’t enough, they run a picture of a kid splashing in some water beneath it? Oh, like they didn’t know exactly what they were doing!  Slow news day – even for the silly season – at the end of a shortened holiday week.  Plus the regular editor’s on vacation probably.  He won’t find out until a few weeks from now when Leno holds this up on “The Tonight Show” and says something like, “Gee, honey, is it me or does the iced tea you made taste vaguely like bologna?”

I guarantee you’d never see something like this on the front page of the LA Times.

And this is precisely why the Daily News gets my business!

Posted by Ted on July 9, 2011, 3:09 AM.

Cartoon Birds!

You’re probably wondering what happened to Fred “Herb” Herbert, Don “Dink” Dietrich, Jack Cannon, “Spence” Irving, Hank Jacobs, “Foof” Fredericks, Joe L. Quimby, “Chick” Dixon, Lou and Morty Schwartz, Frank “Hobe” Hobart, and all the rest of the creative team that worked for Jay Ward Productions after the studio closed up shop in, I think it was 1984, probably.

Now these weren’t the same fellas that drew “The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show,” or “Rocky and Friends,” or “Rocky and His Friends,” or “The Bullwinkle Show,” or “Bullwinkle, RFD,” or whatever you may have known it as in syndication when you were too old to be watching cartoons and it pissed off your father every time he walked in the room.

No, that show was animated in Mexico – because animating a moose and squirrel was a job that Americans wouldn’t do!

But those animators, Dink and Hank and Foof and Herb and Ed and Ted and Slim and Melvin and all the rest –  they came on board for “George of the Jungle” in the 60s, and by God, they stayed til the bitter end.  Anyway, they’re every single one of them all still working today, in 2011, those who aren’t dead that is, and guess what they’re doing! Go ahead, guess!

Well, you’re wrong!

Here’s what they’re doing:

They’re painting pictures of cartoon birds on store windows in the Valley.

Oh, and on the permanent sign on top of the store:

Heh heh…”Discount Birds.”

Okay, okay, settle down, I’m just pulling your leg. My point is that these particular cartoon birds look exactly like something out of “George of the Jungle,” don’t they?  It’s like whoever did character design on “George of the Jungle” back in 1967 painted these birds, right?

Of course I’m right – why wouldn’t I be? So, look, every time I pass this store I see these goddamn birds and I think “It can’t be just me that thinks they look like something out of a Jay Ward cartoon; Jesus, no, it can’t just be me! Others surely must think the same thing! They just need to see them! They need only to see them and then they’ll think the same thing! I have to get the word out!”

So I’ve done my part.

You won’t find content like this on Cartoon Brew.

Posted by Ted on July 8, 2011, 9:00 AM.

Rappin’ Kyra!

The other day I read a news story right here on the internet about bratty kids and their permissive parents. No problem with the content of the story at all; this fellow LZ Granderson who wrote the piece (and is interviewed in the accompanying video) is, of course, right: Most people with young children today are lousy, irresponsible parents who should have never reproduced – and yes, sorry but this includes you, probably, if you have kids. Your children are little monsters and  I hate them. Those (few) of you who this doesn’t apply to – well, you know who you are.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly what he was trying to convey but it’s what I took away from it.

But, Jesus, don’t get your panties in a bunch over that – it’s really beside the point. Your kids suck. What I’m getting at is, in the video, we have a CNN anchor, who a little Ted Parsnips-patented Internet Research tells me is one Kyra Phillips. A pleasant enough gal, to be sure. Attractive, well-spoken, dresses real nice, a regular delight, sure.

If you watch the video, and I’d like you to, thank you, at about the 1:30 mark and continuing for about ten seconds, she suddenly starts gesturing like she’s in some sort of gangsta hip-hop rap-music video.

Well, my point is she looks ridiculous is all.

Now I’d like one of you to do one of those mash-ups with this video of her and audio from one of those rap songs, you know the kind, so it looks like she’s singing a rap song. I’d do it myself but I don’t know how to.

Posted by Ted on , 3:41 AM.

French Fries!

You know, it’s been hot here in Southern California these past few days – but not only during the day. Oh no. It’s also hot at night.

Very early this morning, three a.m. it was, I was sweltering in bed, writhing beneath my sweat-soaked, greasy, Hawaiian Tropic-stained, sandy bedclothes (Like you, I didn’t shower after coming home from the beach on the Fourth of July – too tired!), unable to doze off. I had to be at a meeting at ten o’clock! I needed some sleep!

Ambien? The goddamn pharmacy won’t give me any more refills.  A stiff drink? Well, maybe, but then I’m going to want to find a karaoke bar. Besides, what fun is a stiff drink without Ambien? Suddenly I remembered this:

Of course! McDonald’s can help! So I got in the car and drove over to the local Golden Arches to pick myself up a large order of fries.

“Make sure they’re good an’ hot!” I directed the gal through the speaker.
“¿Que?”
“Nevermind, just get my fries! My fries, woman – I need to get home and sleep!”

Oh, you know I kept that bag good and closed all the way home. Once there, I climbed back in bed, dumped the contents on the pillow next to my head and began pulling them into my mouth a fry at a time, darting my tongue in and out of my mouth like a Gilbert’s skink.

McDonald’s fries work quickly: I was probably only on Fry 4 or 5 before they did their job and I was suddenly in the Land of Nod.  I woke up refreshed some hours later – not fatigued as you’d be from, say, Wendy’s fries.

As you know from the time we had to share that bed at the Peppermill in Reno, I’m a violent sleeper – flailing about while I slumber like a Gilbert’s Skink caught in the jaws of a hungry coyote.  So while I slept, I must have mashed the hell out of the uneaten fries into a sort of paste with my head.

And here’s the most amazing part: where this mass of frymush had adhered to my scalp, my chronic eczema all but disappeared! Sure, I had been picking it out of my hair while meeting with a potential publisher that morning about a new project (the fries worked so good I overslept and hadn’t time for breakfast), but after realizing its additional medicinal properties, I stopped snacking and left the rest of it in/on there.

However: No word yet on whether they’ll alleviate that undiagnosed skin condition on my left foot. But as a handful or two of the fries have migrated down to the bottom of the bed, I’ll have a definitive answer to this in a day or so.  Stay tuned!

Posted by Ted on July 6, 2011, 5:35 PM.

Happy 4th of July!

As with every American family, the Parsnips are no different when it comes to having a host of traditions – some just for fun, others steeped in reverence, and all unique to our household – surrounding the Fourth of July.  But just as in your home, this most important day, the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution, begins with a breakfast of frosted blueberry Lady Liberty brand toaster pastries. Sure, you’ll hear some grouse that they seem to remember them being covered with more blue and red sprinkles when they were a child, that the foil wrappers in which they’re packaged used to have funnier riddles on them (or riddles at all), or that they just know they used to be a lot bigger. But is it the toaster pastries that have gotten smaller (I mention, merely as a devil’s advocate, that toaster slots have measured an industry-standard 1″ x 4-7/8″ since 1938) or have our expectations of America’s promise outgrown our hopes?

Whether you call it Independence Day, the Fourth, or Flag Day as our grandparents did (or even “Armistice Day” as their grandfolk knew it), today is a celebration of the American spirit across the globe. That’s something JoAnn and I reminded Jaden and Caitlyn this morning as the toaster rang out its promise of freedom, a double-helping of liberty with plenty of sprinkles for all, red and blue both representing various things, like patriotism, strewn across a field of white – a living, breathing, edible Old Glory.

Have a wonderful and safe holiday.

Posted by Ted on July 4, 2011, 7:07 AM.